Posted by: monkey!

US and British intelligence agencies hacked into a major manufacturer of Sim cards in order to steal codes that facilitate eavesdropping on mobiles, a US news website says. The Intercept says the revelations came from US intelligence contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Dutch company allegedly targeted - Gemalto - says it is taking the allegations "very seriously". It operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities.

The Intercept says that "the great Sim heist" gave US and British surveillance agencies "the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world's cellular communications, including both voice and data". It says that among the clients of the Netherlands-based company are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and "some 450 wireless network providers around the world".

"Your continued attack on the worlds food supply, as well as the health of those who eat it, has earned you our full attention," wrote AntiSec. "Your crimes against humanity are too many to name on one page."

The Anonymous online activists do keep themselves busy. When they're not defacing Web sites to protest the for-profit prison system or shutting down the public CIA site they're listening in as Scotland Yard and the FBI discuss how to catch them and having a good laugh.

This week, they've ratcheted things up even more by working with WikiLeaks to publish secret stolen e-mails that shine some light on what appear to be the inner workings of Stratfor, a global intelligence firm that seems to have paid informants to monitor, among other things, human rights and environmental activists on behalf of Dow Chemical after the Bhopal disaster, and that allegedly considered using the intelligence it gathers from insiders to grow a strategic investment fund. The company has declined to confirm or deny the contents of the e-mails released, except to suggest that some of them may be forged or altered while some may be authentic.